EPISCOPALIANS ORGANIZE FOR STRONG LAY ACTION IN CHURCH CRISIS; SET WORK CONFERENCE IN ORLANDO

WASHINGTON, DC – (Aug. 3, 2006) – Answering widespread calls from bishops and theologians, an Episcopal lay organization today announced a national conference as part of an initiative for engaging thousands of faithful communicants in the pews against “the schismatic revisionism that is destroying the church,” the sponsor said.

David Virtue, the most-read Anglican journalist, will be conference moderator.

Lay Episcopalians for the Anglican Communion (LEAC) will sponsor the program and underwrite a “mobilization and education conference” in Orlando, Fla. Nov. 20 and 21. It will be the first lay-sponsored major event since successful conclaves held by clergy-led organizations in Dallas, Northern Virginia and Pittsburgh. Those defined issues, declared faithfulness to the Christian doctrine of the Anglican Communion, and pointed to “realignment” of the church.

Despite all efforts to deter them, after “defiantly and radically violating key doctrinal elements of Anglicanism and their own ordination and consecration vows, leaders of the U.S. province have caused us to be suspended from the communion’s operational affairs,” a LEAC press release said. “Our international brothers and sisters, comprising over half of the world’s communicants, have broken or downgraded relationships with our province.” The Canadian province is also in de facto suspension.

The Orlando meeting of traditional Episcopalians is “for rank-and-file lay people willing to work, parish officers and governing boards, and clergy bold enough to show their faith and mettle” at a large working rally which will likely define the foe as misguided bishops leading the “revisionist” forces.

An advertisement for the church press says prominent clergy and lay leaders will address strategies for “releasing trapped Episcopal parishioners,” survival of dioceses in Anglicanism and protecting orthodox priests, governing boards and parishes. There will be workshops on law, mobilization, education and communications.

The huge rift which appears to be breaking up the Episcopal church is largely the result of actions at two straight Episcopal conventions. In 2003 the denomination advanced a gay agenda, including consecration as bishop of a divorced cleric who publicly proclaims his domestic partnership with a homosexual lover. That convention also authorized measures for official church blessings of homosexual unions. The split was deepened when the 2006 convention declined to halt those policies after formal documentation and admonitions from the Anglican Communion.

“Traditional bishops and theologians called fervently for lay help because they know that clergy at-large across the nation are reluctant to oppose revisionist bishops for fear of reprisals, including defrocking, economic losses and being forced to leave their parishes at a time of greatest need for orthodox Christian leadership. We must protect our vulnerable priests and do the courageous right thing that their bishops will not permit them to do. It is our turn at the watch. Truth, clarity and courage will win the day for the Lord.

“The bullying and tyranny of revisionist bishops in many areas is cruel and gruesome. The religious press is full of details of junior clergy, and even a bishop, being insulted and charged with trumped-up claims of such things as ‘abandonment,’ when in truth it is they who are holding firm to the faith.

“Today lay people are rising up, answering the call to new work. The faith needs people in the pews to stop these spiritual marauders and rid our sacred church of such desecration,” the press release said. “The revisionists are going off to some place where they can continue to make up their faith as they go along. We are staying here with true Christianity in Anglicanism.”